Archives

Why Am I Writing My Best Ideas on Scraps of Paper? How to access ideas in your “deep” mind.

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal describing the Morgan Library & Museum’s exhibition in New York of Emily Dickinson’s handwritten fascicles and poetry scraps gave me pause. I pictured the great poetess, as if in a film, in her Amherst home gathering up the closest scrap of “coarse brown wrapping paper” to write down an idea that had sprung to mind.

I jumped cut to regarding my own creative process because I, too, often capture an inspiration by grabbing the closest scrap of paper and jotting it down. Inspired by Emily Dickinson, I want to talk about how scraps of paper, notebooks, handwriting, and keyboarding relate and can help you connect to writing creatively from the place where ideas originate in your “deep mind.”

What is my scraps-of-paper writing process?

My process for generating writing ideas is a bit mysterious — like trying to nail down the inspiration for a painting or a musical composition. It seems to play out in a subconscious vault buried alive, deep in my brain, probably in the vicinity where my dreams are composed. What I call my “deep” mind.

When the vault cooperates and frees an idea for an essay or a book, I’m more often than not in a random place, often daydreaming, and am obliged to scribble it down on a scrap of paper before it etherizes, lost to me forever. Later, if deemed notebook worthy, I copy the idea into my writing notebook — usually a sentence or title idea, nothing outline-y or fleshed-out.

Photo: Samuel Zeller/Unsplash

Once I instinctively settle on a topic I want to write about, ideas that must germinate in my “deep” mind, sprout in my consciousness hither and thither, and I jot those on scraps of paper, too, usually from a stash in my bathroom drawer because, weirdly, that’s where I often am when they pop up. Sometimes when I’m hanging out on the living room sofa, an idea somehow gets watered while I’m watching TV or reading the newspaper or a magazine. I’ll rip off a piece of newspaper, note it, then file it later in a folder marked with the piece’s working title.

How do I organize my ideas to write?

Bench-Accounting/Unsplash

Once I’ve accumulated enough scraps of paper in the folder, a rough outline for a piece has emerged, which I’ll compose on my desktop during my morning writing session, print, then edit on paper in the afternoon. The next morning, I have the edited pages to work with; and, therefore, never face a blank screen. I go through a process: building up a piece in the morning, editing in the afternoon, over and over through many revisions — perhaps as many as thirty — over many days, or even weeks.

What kind of writing notebook do I use?

I buy one notebook at the beginning of the year for my writing ideas. I hate it when a notebook won’t lay flat, so I buy a hardcover spiral one. I get the six-by-nine size. My preference for the six-by-nine over the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven can only be traced to that subconscious vault, my deep mind, where new-school-year-notebook excitement waves its hands and my secret desires emit proclamations like:

“I Love This! I Hate That!”

Photo: Aaron Burden/Unsplash

Is my writing process working?

I rarely brainstorm on paper. If I bought more notebooks and let my brain riff on paper to flesh out my ideas instead of waiting until my deep mind sends up ideas, would I produce more articles and books? I wondered after reading Nicole Dieker’s article, “Why I Don’t Use Moleskins,” about the many notebooks she uses.

Is my relying on scraps of paper and buying only one notebook hampering my productivity and my ability to access my deep mind? Do I need more paper acreage? I actually love to write with a pen, like my Pilot G-2.07, in cursive. So, would I be more creative and write more articles if I broke the bank and purchased more notebooks to brainstorm or journal on paper?

Is handwriting or keyboarding better for planning to write?

I think my answer partially lies in an intriguing article on Medium, “The Joys of Typing,” by New York Times Magazine and Wired writer Clive Thompson, who says ideas are generated and recalled depending on the medium you use: pen and paper or a keyboard.

Clive cites a study in The Atlantic that concluded students who handwrite lecture notes remember more than students who type them. By typing, students merely “transcribe” the material as they listen, not accessing “the focus that handwriting brings to bear,” he says.

Further, Clive adds:

“If you look at the science around typing, it suggests that keyboards may not be so hazardous for your mind — because it all depends on what task you’re doing. When you’re taking notes, it’s true, handwriting can have an edge. It’s good for absorbing knowledge.”

He continues,

“When I’m writing, the comparative slowness of handwriting can be a boon — particularly if I’m trying to do big-picture thinking. When I’m structuring an article, I often find I can only do it on pencil and paper.”

I agree. I, too, find that I can only plan on paper, that handwriting accesses my creative, deep-mind space. If I look at a blank screen, I draw a blank.

Though Clive concludes,

“…to produce knowledge — to develop and express your thoughts of your own? Then the winner is often typing. More specifically, it’s fast typing.”

In other words, the brain races ahead transferring ideas into print when you’re typing along the idea highway at sixty or seventy words per minute. I try to get up to this speed, after the planning process, when I’m working on the meat of a book or an essay. Thoughts and events play out in my head very fast, movie-like, and I need to get them down as quickly as possible before the scene, like a dream, vanishes. I love typing for this reason. I can tap in and capture what’s happening in my deep mind thanks to the touch typing class I was required to take in high school that trained me not to look at the keyboard.

What causes writer’s block?

Like Clive above, I plan a piece with a pen (or pencil) on paper and have my potential-article folder with my scraps of paper handy before I start typing away on the idea highway. Otherwise? Angst. Paralysis. Writer’s block. (Oh, my!)

The last thing I want to do is yank up a blank screen with no idea of what I’m going to put on it. To hammer out a new piece, I go over my handwritten notes in my head while I’m taking a shower so I know what I’m going to write about and am itching to get started when I sit down at my desk.

Perhaps using scraps of paper prevents the same thing from happening to me when I’m faced with a blank page in a notebook. Perhaps I don’t write that much in a notebook for fear of facing a blank page, for fear of writer’s block — the inability to tap into the deep mind. I’m sure. Yes, I’m sure this is it. Apparently, I’ve constructed my whole system in my deep mind, to prevent writer’s block; and, fortunately, it’s being aided and abetted by my practice of only buying one notebook so that I rely on my scraps-of-paper process to capture ideas.

***

I’d love to view the exhibition at the Morgan Library of Emily Dickinson’s handwritten work, to have the images of her “faintly pencilled manuscripts” and her beautiful, spidery cursive handwriting, which my own oddly resembles, lodged in my subconscious vault. I wonder what those images would conjure and inspire me to write about some day.

***

Only known photo of Emily Dickinson. (Flickr/Public Domain/Amherst College Archives)